Anduril speeds up launch of defense payloads by buying Apex satellite buses off the shelf
Anduril is expanding even further into the “ultimate high ground.”
The company, which is best known for AI-powered defense products that span air, land and sea, is partnering with satellite bus manufacturing startup Apex Space to rapidly deploy payloads on orbit for the U.S. Department of Defense.
It is a rare instance of the growing defense contractor choosing to partner with a supplier rather than building the product itself or just acquiring the supplier outright. But the partnership makes a lot of sense: Anduril credits much of its success to its approach to product design and development, which emphasizes developing a high volume of products quickly, using off the shelf components to lower costs. Apex is doing something similar by productizing satellite buses, the part of the spacecraft that hosts the payload. These have historically been subject to bespoke engineering processes, long lead times, and high prices.
“Our focus is really replicating those same things that we’ve done in other domains, in the space domain,” Gokul Subramanian, the Anduril’s SVP of space and software, said in a media briefing. “If you think about what Anduril has been successful in doing in maritime, in the air domain, in the ground domain, it’s moving from low volume, high cost systems, which is what traditionally is fielded, to high volume, low cost systems. That’s our same belief in the space domain, that in order to succeed in this domain, we must move to high volume, low cost.”
Ian Cinnamon, Apex Space’s co-founder and CEO, said that the satellite bus is the “biggest bottleneck” in the space ecosystem preventing America from putting more mass into orbit. Their aim is to deliver satellite buses to customers in a matter of weeks instead of years, with more transparent pricing and a standardized product.
An Anduril-built payload flew on Apex’s first-ever mission in March, which Subramanian referred to as a “mission data processor” to enable on-orbit data processing of images captured from the satellite. That payload uses Lattice, a command and control process that is deployed across Anduril’s products. In all, Anduril was able to demonstrate the ability to point the spacecraft at a specific location, take an image of what the spacecraft saw, process that image, and downlink the data on Earth — all totally autonomously.
“That was the first experiment that led us to have the confidence in our vision for space, our partnership with Ian, the bus platform that they’ve built,” he said.
Anduril has already purchased a dedicated satellite bus from Apex that will launch next year. Anduril will operate that system, which will carry payloads built in-house and by others. That will be the model moving forward, the pair of executives explained: while Apex will provide the buses, Anduril will “missionize the system,” Subramanian said.
Subramanian declined to comment on specific opportunities the company is hoping to pursue through this new partnership, but it leaves the company well positioned to take the prime contractor role on certain desirable contracts. The Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture program, for instance, is fielding masses of satellites to upgrade the Space Force’s aging missile tracking and defense architecture. The SDA is spending huge sums for these satellites; thus far, companies including Sierra Space ,Rocket Lab, SpaceX, have won contracts to build satellites for the program. Anduril no doubt hopes to join the club.
This is not Anduril’s first foray into the space domain: the company won a $10.5 contract with the Space Systems Command in July 2023 to field Lattice into Space Surveillance Network’s (SSN) sensors, used to provide early missile warnings. Just last week, the company was also awarded a $25.3 million contract from the Space Force to provide additional upgrades to the SSN.
This is the first partnership of many that Anduril intends to announce, including with other bus suppliers, Subramanian added.